BEAT THAT COUNSEL OF ‘UNTIL…’

Your friends, colleagues and family love you so much. They tell you, “Until we find someone who has succeeded doing this thing, we will not advise you to begin it.”

As good as that is, it’s a license to procrastination.

I do not need to define procrastination for you. You already practised enough.

“I’ll wait till this change happens.”

“I’ll start when I get a promotion…”

“One of these days I’ll get to that…”

I believe you have either said or heard so much of that or maybe something similar.

One of these days is really none of these days. If you won’t get to work now, later will never be a good enough time.

Let me share with you 2 simple tips if you want to beat that counsel of ‘until…’ you’ve been paying attention to.

1. ‘Until’ is the voice of experience.

“By its very nature, experience is a result of the past, and it is therefore limited to and controlled by previous exposures,” says Edinoh Kingsley, author of Enemies of Potential.

If you submit your potentials to history, or past experiences, you put yourself where you will underperform. That is because past experiences could limit future adventures. Your ability and potential is never limited to your experience.

2. ‘Until’ is the voice of tradition.

In Break the Frame, a new coaching course I’m kicking off this November, I go into the details of traditions and untils. Some excerpts:

What is tradition? And how does it work as frame that you seriously need to be free from as a young leader? You must understand that when I say tradition is a frame, I’m not referring to culture. The two are distinctly different.

A tradition is a norm, a process (whether working or not), or a standard passed down to a younger generation.

What happens with tradition, as different from a culture, is that it most times cages your creativity. You have got to be creative to lead effectively.

I learnt that the easiest way for tradition to create boundaries is for the people you look up to plateau in their development. What happens is every counsel you get from them will be based on what frames they were able to function within.

If it is out of their frames, they will never get to trying it.

If you really want to turn out great, make exploits, impact people with great influence, you must be ready to shunt such traditions.

When you’re counselled ‘until…’what you’re being told is “Let what we’ve always done kick in, whether it worked so well for us or not.”

Let me round this up with something I shared on my Facebook page some days ago:

Have you thought about the fact that life and death is a choice you make than something that happens to you?

Does that tell you that life or death, whichever you choose, is intentional?

Why don’t you start your intentional life today?

If there is anything you feel has stopped you, what could it be? Would you rather break the counsel of ‘until’ and make a choice now?